Martin Lindstrom

After thousands of hours investigating the rapidly changing consumer post-COVID-19 landscape, Martin Lindstrom and his team have identified surprising new consumer needs … and remarkable business opportunities, too.

Throughout marketing history, studies have identified seven Points of Market Entry — that is, points at which a customer segment becomes receptive to a whole new category of products and services: newborn arrives, first day in school, starting college, first job, moving to a new home, getting married, and retiring.

Devastatingly, COVID-19 has introduced an “8th entry point,” a change so profound that it will impact every sector via a global synchronization of human behavior. It will establish a completely new, universal language and change of consumer patterns. Lindstrom calls it the “8EP.”

Strategy eats culture for breakfast. Companies have never been so overwhelmed with emails, reports, data, statistics, and endless PowerPoint presentations, while at the same time preaching the importance of culture. Notice any conflicts?

Lindstrom takes his audience on a deep, remarkable dive inside some of the world’s largest organizations and their daily challenges as they rediscover, build, and maintain powerful cultures.

What happened when Maersk, the world’s largest shipping company, was paralyzed by a two-month global cyber attack? When Lowes Foods faced two choices: to completely change their business model or to close down the entire retail chain? Or when Standard Chartered, the world’s 10th largest bank, realized that “common sense” had completely vanished from the behavior of their 90,000 staff members, leading to overly complex service offerings and immense customer frustration?

In each of these cases, culture became the savior.

As the spearhead of these and many more remarkable culture transformation projects worldwide, Martin Lindstrom takes the audience behind the scenes and shares what it takes to bring culture front and center in organizations that had been paralyzed by bureaucracy, compliance, and inefficacy.

Viewing bureaucracy as a disease, the Lindstrom team rebuilt the purpose of the organizations, reinvigorated and empowered the staff, and, most importantly, systematically removed the red tape that was killing entrepreneurship and productivity. In one organization, Lindstrom and his team banned PowerPoint presentations. In another, they entirely removed the CC function from Outlook. Meetings were limited to maximum four participants, and smart phones were banned. In one case, he even introduced a special division called The Ministry of Common Sense. And in every case, it worked!

In just two years, Maersk recovered and added an additional 43% to their global brand value. Lowes became the most innovative retailer in the U.S., and Standard Chartered nearly doubled their share price.

Fourteen years ago, everyone’s favorite toy company was near bankruptcy — but then something remarkable happened, elevating LEGO to become the world’s most powerful brand … seemingly overnight.

With Amazon and Walmart’s relentless attack on the conventional retail industry, Lowes knew they had a two-year deadline to survive. Fast-forward four years, and customers were lining up to enter Lowes stores.

Around the globe, conventional postal service organizations are considered to be dinosaurs. There’s only one exception: Switzerland. Why was Swiss Post, in contrast to the rest of the world, the first to adopt drones and self-driving cars, placing their services way ahead of Amazon and Uber?

Over two decades Lindstrom and his team have challenged companies from almost every industry — toys, retail, postal services, shipping, banking, food, beverage, pharma, automobile, fashion — to rediscover their core and transform themselves. Lindstrom always starts with the customer, but what follows consistently breaks the rules of conventional thinking. His unusual method proves itself resilient within even the most stubborn organizations.

In this presentation, packed with behind-the-scenes, first-hand observations from some of the most remarkable business transformations in the world, Lindstrom introduces a ready-to-use framework, suggests simple and memorable metaphors, and merges it all into a captivating narrative. He will have the audience on the edge of their seats, leaving them eager to transform their own businesses. As Lindstrom says: Sixty-five per cent of the jobs today’s 12-year-old will do when he’s grown don’t exist today. So, why would yours, unless you change … right now?

A few years ago, we all shook our heads as a doctor was dragged out of a United Airlines plane, leading to the company’s biggest PR disaster in its 92-year history.

But is that any different from what’s going on in your organization? What would happen if you became an undercover employee in your own organization, experiencing what your customers experience every day?

In this eye-opening presentation, Lindstrom goes underground with his audience. He shares first-hand recordings of disastrous customer interactions — and, yes, surprised managers and CEO’s who thought everything was perfect. This highly thought-provoking presentation is packed with videos and case studies, placing a revealing mirror in front of the audience. It will make them think, reflect, and, most important, act.

What makes Lindstrom’s presentation unique is that it’s hands-on, based on his personal experience designing, implementing, and monitoring some of the world’s most successful customer journeys, including the Walt Disney theme parks, Swiss International Airlines, Burger King, Maersk, and Dorchester Collection, the operator of the Beverly Hills Hotel, the Bel-Air Hotel, and many other luxury properties around the world.

What these and numerous other cases all have in common isn’t huge budgets. Instead, they share clever, innovative thinking, often requiring only a couple thousand dollars of investment to create happy customers and million-dollar returns.

This remarkable, highly entertaining presentation is guaranteed to change your view of customer journeys, demonstrating that a small effort can yield a big difference.

LIKE IT OR NOT, businesses are drifting away from the consumer. In the last year, only 1 in 3,000 executives has spent time with their consumers. Instead of keeping in touch with consumers, leaders rely on BIG Data — reports, databases, and statistics — in order to understand the emotions of our most important asset. The only problem with this approach: They’re all looking at the past in order to predict the future.

Emerging in its place is a new approach, Small Data, which Lindstrom defines as seemingly insignificant consumer observations that completely transform the way businesses are built and run.

In 2004, the LEGO Company was near bankruptcy. Big Data had informed the executives that, due to the lengthy construction time, kids no longer had interest in playing with LEGO. In response, LEGO introduced larger modules, which cut the building time in half. However, the result didn’t mirror their expectations. Sales plummeted, and as a result the company decided to cease all conventional Big Data-based sources — and instead introduce Small Data.

It was a visit to an 11-year-old German boy’s home that profoundly changed the LEGO Group’s view of the world. A LEGO executive asked the kid what he was most proud of. It wasn’t a Nintendo or PlayStation, but a pair of old, worn-out sneakers. The reason why? Because, as the kid explained, the sneakers’ very particular worn-down angle on the side of the sole proved he was the #1 skateboarder in town. You see, when pro skateboarders slide down the board, their shoes get worn down exactly like this 11-year-old boy’s shoes.

This insight taught LEGO that if a kid is willing to spend hundreds, if not thousands, of hours fine-tuning an angle on a shoe, why wouldn’t a kid spend thousands of hours playing with LEGO? They reintroduced the small bricks, created the LEGO movie, and formed alliances with Star Wars, Harry Potter, and Batman.

LEGO had lost contact with its core consumers, yet by adopting Small Data, the link between the consumer and the iconic toy company was recovered — making LEGO the most admired brand in the world, according to Brand Finance 2019.

Lindstrom will share the remarkable insight behind LEGO’s success, and he will discuss how Small Data has been instrumental in the turnaround success of numerous other companies around the world, in shipping, banking, retail, fashion, and food and beverage.